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American Morning
Nation Mourns Death of Carroll O'Connor
Aired June 22, 2001 - 10:02 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Starting with the life of Carroll O'Connor, who built his career in film and on television. But his best-known role thrust him squarely into a social and political stage. As the blustery bigot Archie Bunker, O'Connor turned television sets into windows, peering into the nation's soul. O'Connor died of a heart attack yesterday. He was 76.
Our Lauren Hunter takes a look back now at a role that provided more than just entertainment.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAUREN HUNTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Carroll O'Connor appeared in more than 30 movies, including "Lonely Are the Brave" and "Cleopatra," and guest starred in scores of television shows. But it was one character that made his a household name.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "ALL IN THE FAMILY")
CARROLL O'CONNOR, ACTOR: Good evening to one and all!
JEAN STAPLETON, ACTRESS: Archie! Look at you!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNTER: For 13 years, first on "All in the Family" and then on "Archie's Place," Carroll O'Connor played Archie Bunker, the word- mangling, blue-collar bigot.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "ALL IN THE FAMILY")
SHERMAN HEMSLEY, ACTOR: See, that's the trouble with you people. You always think that...
O'CONNOR: Hold it. Who are you calling "you people"? You people are you people.
(LAUGHTER)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNTER: O'Connor said he didn't play Archie to make people like him for his attitude or hate him. He said he just played his attitude as truthfully as he knew how. And the way he played him earned the actor the admiration of millions of TV fans and the praise of the industry. Archie Bunker brought Carroll O'Connor four Emmy awards and many more nominations.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "HOME FRONT")
O'CONNOR: One thing in the world this family doesn't need is for you to go around talking to your friends about your personal problems.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNTER: When he left the character of Archie Bunker behind him for good in 1983, O'Connor decided to take to the stage. He appeared in "Home Front" and "Brothers." Both shows closed quickly and O'Connor himself would later describe them as flops. But the man who enjoyed great success on television dealt just as easily with a stumble on Broadway.
O'CONNOR: You come on, you flop, and you go on to something else.
HUNTER: What was next was a TV movie called "Brass." But it wasn't long before O'Connor once again became a regular fixture on television, this time in a dramatic role as the chief of police on the weekly series "In the Heat of the Night."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT")
O'CONNOR: I am the only one around here who has any free expression of individuality. Everybody else does what I say. Do you understand that?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: Yes, sir.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNTER: His only son, Hugh, was a regular cast member on the show and O'Connor's pride and joy. But in 1995, O'Connor's life was turned upside down when Hugh committed suicide after years of struggling with a drug addiction.
O'Connor capped his work on "Heat of the Night" by winning his fifth Emmy. He had also expanded his role, serving as one of the show's producers, approving all the scripts, sometimes writing his own. But O'Connor realized that no matter what he did, his longtime character Archie Bunker would always be a part of him.
O'CONNOR: I told somebody recently, "One of these days I'm going to play 'King Lear,' and they're going to see Archie Bunker in 'King Lear.' And they should.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: Of course, a favorite target of Archie Bunker's rants and rancor was his son-in-law, Michael Stivic, known less affectionately of course as "Meathead." But off screen, the bond between O'Connor and co-star Rob Reiner, who played that role, was one of affection and admiration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROB REINER, DIRECTOR: Just as a very compassionate, passionate, deep thinking person who cared very deeply about social issues and equities in the world. He was a -- like I say, an intellect and a profound thinker when it came to social and political issues. And I think he would want to be remembered as that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: O'Connor spent the last six years mounting an anti-drug crusade. In 1995, his son, Hugh O'Connor -- his only son -- committed suicide after battling alcohol and drug addiction.
Rob Reiner says O'Connor transformed Archie Bunker into -- quoting now -- "the most indelible character in the history of American television."
For a closer look at O'Connor's work and his labor of love, we turn to James Poniewozik, a critic for "TIME" magazine.
James, thanks for being with us.
JAMES PONIEWOZIK, TV CRITIC, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Thank you.
O'BRIEN: "The most indelible character": Would you say that -- or at least put it in top five?
PONIEWOZIK: Oh, at least definitely in the top five. I wouldn't, you know, make that -- hand it to the top -- but, yes, absolutely. I mean, he both captured a social moment at a really, you know, important time of social upheaval in the country. But he also sort of transformed the character of the TV dad, you know, who used to be this sort of infinitely likable and always wise and all-knowing character, and made him fallible and real.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: It's a long way from Ozzie, isn't it?
PONIEWOZIK: A long way from Ozzie, a long way from you know, Hugh Downs. I mean, he made him somebody that was fallible not in jokey sort of Ralph Kramden kind of way, but in a way that people recognized from their own lives, representing a whole generation of, you know, World War II-era breadwinners, who saw the world changing around them, didn't understand and didn't necessarily like it.
O'BRIEN: You know, what's interesting about this is that there's a bit of a paradox here because, on first blush, Archie Bunker is such a caricature, and yet Carroll O'Connor was able to play him with a level of subtlety, which really at times made him a rather sympathetic character. How did he pull that off?
PONIEWOZIK: You know, it would have been very easy to make people just laugh at or dislike Archie Bunker. But Carroll O'Connor was a really talented character actor.
And you can see in the way that he physically plays Archie Bunker, if you watch him on screen, there's this great thing he has of giving the sense of being perpetually tired, you know, bone tired -- he was a blue-collar worker -- spiritually tired, tired of the world changing around him. You know, he always had that sort of just kind of bone-weary shamble.
And he really made this character into somebody relatable, who you could understand even if you didn't like what he said, where he was coming from and why he did it. And a lot of people knocked him because people said that, you know, there was this character saying these awful things on television and people might take it the wrong way or like it for the wrong reasons. But if you couldn't identify him and understand him, the show wouldn't really make you think. And if it didn't really make you think, it wouldn't be as important as it is today.
O'BRIEN: All right, one final question before we get away. Do you think that we liked, collectively, Archie Bunker for the right reasons or for the wrong reasons?
PONIEWOZIK: Well, I think we liked him for the right reasons in that we liked him because he was a person even though a very, sometimes offensively fallible one. And that's really, you know, the only way to create art -- and I'll call it art -- that affects people and changes their perspective on the world.
O'BRIEN: James Poniewozik is a TV critic for "TIME" magazine. Thanks for being with us on CNN LIVE THIS MORNING.
And we will continue our coverage on remembrances of Carroll O'Connor all throughout the day here on CNN. And at 9:00 p.m. Eastern tonight, CNN's "LARRY KING LIVE" will have an hour-long tribute to Carroll O'Connor, dead at the age of 76.
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